Blog Post #9: What is Math Anxiety?

Welcome back everyone!

Today, I am going to be discussing a very important topic with you all - math anxiety. Math anxiety is a very real thing that students experience and it is often dismissed by teachers when they are teaching and evaluating their students. 

As you may have read in the photo above, math anxiety is different from a simple dislike of mathematics. For some students, the act of engaging in mathematics instills many negative emotions such as failure and fear within them. These negative emotions become overwhelming and thus, impairs students' ability to successfully perform. Math anxiety can impact students as early as first grade through impacts on their working memory. An individual's working memory is essentially like a mental notepad or sketchpad - something that comes in handy when keeping track of numbers in mathematics. Unfortunately, math anxiety disrupts the working memory and causes students in both elementary and high school to fall behind their peers. It is important that even students without math anxiety develop positive study habits that enable them to grow confidence as math becomes more complex. 

Now some of you may be wondering... how does math anxiety even develop? Math anxiety can target children and students in a variety of ways. Some causes of math anxiety may include:

1. The Influence of Teachers

Students can easily pick up on a teacher's feelings towards mathematics. For example, if a teacher is excited about math, the students may convey these same emotions. However, if educators are negative towards mathematics or certain units of it, the students may also pick up on these emotions as well. Additionally, if teachers neglect to recognize the presence of math anxiety in their classrooms, this can also worsen students' level of math anxiety. 

2. The Pressure Caused By Time Limits on Tests

Students can develop anxiety towards mathematics due to deadlines that timed tests impose on them. This time constraint causes students to forget concepts that they have studied and would have no issues remembering outside of the test time. This causes students' grades to decline and confirms their fear of failure. Testing is a vicious cycle that is difficult to be broken once the math anxiety towards tests has developed.

 

3. The Fear of Public Embarrassment 

Math anxiety within students can also be linked to negative emotions and experiences in their past. For example, if a student has experienced laughter or anger from others in response to getting an answer wrong, it can make their math anxiety even worse. 

Now that we have established some of the main ways in which math anxiety can be developed, it is important that, as educators, we understand what we can do to help our students cope with this anxiety. It is our job to understand this anxiety and help to reduce it as they progress through their mathematics journey. Some tips when engaging with students who have math anxiety during lessons or after school help include:

• Positive reinforcement
• Suggesting a tutor
• Make math fun and engaging
• Reassure students that there is not just one way to solve a problem
• Allow lots of opportunities for students to ask questions
• Encourage positive self-talk

These are all important tips for educators to follow when interacting with their students in math classes. However, there are also some tips to suggest for students to try in order to help them overcome their math anxiety. Some of these tips include:

• Confidence + Preparation = Success
• Ask Questions
• There is more than one way to solve a problem
• Overcome negative self-talk
• Read your math textbook
• Go back to the basics if you need to
• Use technology for assistance too

Something that I saw online while researching math anxiety that really caught my attention was a poster that I now fully intend to put up in my future classroom. This poster screams positive reinforcement and positive self-talk. It encourages students to be nicer to themselves and understand that their best is still good enough. 

I hope that once I am in my future high school mathematics classroom that I can conquer these feelings of math anxiety within my students and allow them to grow and overcome these feelings of fear and failure.  I hope I was able to teach you all a thing or two about math anxiety and the importance in recognizing it and helping your students overcome it. 

Until next time... 

Signing off, 

        Ms. Blackwell